Urological instruments are commonly disinfected by soaking them prior to use in a solution of buffered glutaraldehyde or some other strong disinfecting or sterilizing solution. While such a "cold soaking sterilization" procedure is most frequently associated with urological instruments, it may be used for disinfecting any instruments which are not capable of withstanding autoclaving temperatures or cannot conveniently be sterilized by other means.
Quite typically, all of the instruments required for a selected urological procedure are placed in a stainless steel basin containing the disinfecting or sterilizing solution and are simply soaked in that solution for a period of approximately 10 to 20 minutes. Thereafter, the instruments are grasped and lifted from the basin, rinsed, and laid out on a sterile-draped surface in the area of patient examination or operation.
A main disadvantage of the soaking and rinsing procedure as so described is that instrument damage has been found to occur with disturbing frequency. Some instruments or their parts are extremely delicate such as, for example, telescopes, fiber-optic light tubes, and cutting loops. By contrast, other instruments or parts commonly used in the same operative procedures are relatively sturdy and heavy. Since they are all treated in the soaking solution at the same time, and since they are ordinarily introduced into and removed from such a solution as a group, some damage to the more delicate (and expensive) components is not unusual.
Instrument damage through galvanic corrosion has also been a significant problem, especially because of the corrosive nature of the soak solutions and dissimilarities in the metallic composition of the instruments and the basins in which they are placed. Efforts to reduce such corrosion by lining the basins with towels have been only partially effective and, it is now suspected, may create a further problem by reducing the effectiveness of the solutions in disinfecting or sterilizing the instruments.
The recent use of plastic soaking basins has been more effective, although not completely so, in reducing instrument corrosion. Breakage and other instrument damage has continued to remain a problem notwithstanding the use of resilient plastic materials and even the use of perforated trays or baskets for introducing, supporting, and removing the instruments in mass in cold soaking procedures.
Patent references indicative of the state of the art are U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,807,954, 3,779,707, and 3,437,423.